Seasons of the Soul

From Opposition to Polarity Thinking

While talking one day with a friend, Lloyd Nygaard, about life and our tendency to view things as either/or, he mentioned that we need to move from opposition to polarity thinking, and presented the following example.
 
If you think of a piece of paper with 100 at the top and 0 at the bottom, you would tend to think in terms of 0 being the least and 100 being the best. This is opposition thinking. However, if you made the 0 ice and the 100 steam, the element in between would be water. There would no longer be better or worse, because water becomes one or the other depending on temperature. So the steam, the water, and the ice all coexist in a state of equality. They are merely variations within a given polarity, not opposition.
 
I think this is a good visual example for expanding perception and moving beyond either/or.

From Seasons of the Soul print edition 1996

Quotable Quotes

It is a lesson which all history teaches the wise, to put trust in ideas, and not in circumstances"
~Ralph Waldo      Emerson

 
" Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakens."-Carl Jung

We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit.
~e.e.cummings
 
"Be inspired with the belief that life is a great and noble
calling; not a mean and groveling thing that we are to shuffle
through as we can, but an elevated and lofty destiny."
~William E. Gladstone

Through return to simple living comes control of desires. In control of desires stillness is attained. In stillness the world is restored. -- Lao Tzu

Youth is happy because it has the ability to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.  -- Franz Kafka

Words of Wisdom

Our world today is mostly about getting, not giving. It is a terrible affliction, one that infects every facet of our world.

Giving is like water flowing freely. It nourishes the plants and animals, creates life, flows, goes from the sky to the land to the water and back to the sky again, completing the Great Hoop of Life.

Getting is static, withholding, stagnant. It accelerates decay and dissolution.
We are taught that the more we acquire and hoard, the greater we are, the more we “have.” But having “more” inevitably highlights its opposite, less. One can never have enough; there is always more to be had; so having more means having less by definition. It is a bottomless pit.

We have everything already. Creator gives us just what we need. If we try to take more than we can hold, use, enjoy, we are encumbered, unfree.

The way of free peoples: giveaway. It is the way of life. People who always want more die unfulfilled. Aho.                                                                                                                         ~Jim PathFinder Ewing -

Mankind Is No Island

This small 3 + minute film won an award...entirely shot with a cell phone with a budget total of $57.

Easy to watch, and inspiring as well:

DailyGood: An Unusual Movie: Mankind Is No Island

Light Humor

These fit so well they should be in a dictionary...

ADULT: A person who has stopped growing at both ends and is now growing in the middle.

BEAUTY PARLOR: A place where women curl up and dye.

CANNIBAL: Someone who is fed up with people.

CHICKENS: The only animals you eat before they are born and after they are dead.

COMMITTEE: A body that keeps minutes and wastes hours.

DUST: Mud with the juice squeezed out.

EGOTIST: Someone who is usually me-deep in conversation.

HANDKERCHIEF: Cold Storage.

INFLATION: Cutting money in half without damaging the paper.

MOSQUITO: An insect that makes you like flies better.

RAISIN: Grape with a sunburn.

SECRET: Something you tell to one person at a time.

TOOTHACHE: The pain that drives you to extraction .

TOMORROW: One of the greatest labor saving devices of today..

YAWN: An honest opinion openly expressed.

WRINKLES: Something other people have, similar to my character lines.

~Author unknown

Beyond the Wall

by Charles "Tom" Brown

In coming to prison I’ve learned the hard way how resistance to losses increases the suffering. Instead there has to be a kind of surrender. I’ve found that the degree of suffering is directly related to the degree of holding on. Most of us don’t let go of anything very easily.

A subtle part of this dance with loss is knowing and remembering that although my body is imprisoned, my heart and mind have a different kind of freedom. The most important thing I’ve learned in the last ten years is that even in the midst of a long prison sentence, there can be happiness, even joy.

Now to the tricky part: all of life is a blessing, a gift. For years I couldn’t call the loss of material goods and my freedom a gift. It felt like a curse, actually, something undeserved and unnecessary. It still feels like a curse some days, but there are gifts here, too. Losses remind us that we don’t have forever to take care of what matters most to us. In these years of doing what I could to help other inmates, my life has opened up like a flower and grace has come in a thousand ways like a cloud of butterflies on a summer’s morning.

So loss is a dance, an admonition, a curse, a blessing. I would not wish it on anyone. Nonetheless, here I am. How can I not bow down to it? It has humbled me and stripped me bare; it has given me my true life.

Quotable Quotes

“Often we allow ourselves to be upset by small things we should despise and forget. We lose many irreplaceable hours brooding over grievances that, in a year's time, will be forgotten by us and by everybody. No, let us devote our life to worthwhile actions and feelings, to great thoughts, real affections and enduring undertakings."
~Andre Maurois
1885-1967, Writer

"I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble."
~Helen Keller

Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.                                                                                                                                                --Rainer Maria Rilke

Wabi Sabi

Many wise traditions know the importance of finding a balance between action and stillness. One way of achieving that balance is by a simple yet profound way of living called 'Wabi Sabi'.

It is a way that is natural, drawing close to the real world, and relaxing perpetually into beautiful patterns that exist there. Wabi Sabi is a way of life that appreciates and accepts complexity while at the same time values simplicity. It nurtures all that is authentic by acknowledging three simple realities: nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect. To accept these realities is to accept contentment as the maturation of happiness, and to acknowledge that clarity and grace can be found in genuine unvarnished existence. Filled with subtlety and depth, this way is a river flowing toward and away from you, and always within you.
--Richard Powell

Sand Painting and Sand Castles

Creativity finds amazing outlets. We see it in the many wonders we have created. Here is more in the realm of sand as medium to art.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=518XP8prwZo

 

YouTube - Sand Castles....Amazing!!

Deep Listening

When someone deeply listens to you it’s like holding out a dented cup you’ve had since childhood and watching it fill up with cold fresh water.
When it balances on top of the brim, you are understood. When it overflows and touches your skin you are loved.
When someone deeply listens to you the room where you stay starts a new life and the place where you wrote your first poem begins to glow in your mind’s eye.
It is as if gold has been discovered!
When someone deeply listens to you, your bare feet are on the earth and a beloved land that seemed distant is now at home within you.
~John Fox